Hacker News Reader

Jdon Coinbase Is Now Selling Over $1M USD Of Bitcoin Per Month

The problem with all fiat currencies is they have no inherent value; it is all in the eye of the beholder. So what is an "appropriate" price is quite difficult to determine. Most currencies are driven by being effective monopolies wherever they are issued, so the market price remains somewhat stable. Even so, many professional economists have opined that the exchange rates even between major currencies are way too volatile.

This is, among other things, because there is a whole lot of loose money floating around that can easily jump between currencies. We are probably going to see a lot more of this in the Bitcoin world, which I expect has a lot more volatility ahead of it -- somewhat ironically in this case, as the increased liquidity promotes volatility, since it becomes an instrument of pure speculation that was previously too difficult for professional traders to deal in.

In any case, I also had the intuition around the $11-12 mark that bitcoin was a good investment, since the major hurdles around the security issues were probably ironed out, but didn't invest anything -- probably because deep down I'm a value investor and don't see a lot of value in driving speculation in something that doesn't have inherent value (despite the many interesting technical aspects to Bitcoin).

Jdon Periodis Web – A Historical Atlas and Gazetteer of Europe from Year 1 to 2000

That was easy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

Jdon Student Member Develops Device That Mimics Brain

These over-hyped stories are getting amusing. Next year I expect:

Headline

Nine year old African girl develops brain-enhancing neuroimplants with a set of toothpicks after watching a educational video on $25 laptop received from microfinancing initiative.

True story (not in linked post)

Kid watches stupid stunt on Youtube. Attempting same, stabs self in the eye and almost dies.

Jdon PayMill, Stripe clone, rolls out silently across Europe

Generally speaking, I agree, but the Samwer teams often overstep the bounds and going beyond simply duplicating functionality (i.e. blatantly ripping the design features and html/css theme of the website landing page). I think if you talk to people who've worked for their companies (I have) there is the general impression that whatever the boundary is that should not be crossed, it is being crossed.

Jdon Gates' Review of Academically-Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

Can someone give this a meaningful title? Like perhaps, "Bill Gates comments on the state of higher education" ?

I think this is a bot produced post...

Jdon Getting into YC as a single, non-technical founder

Nope, it is to have multiple Harvard degrees, worked at top law firm, run a company, been featured in a magazine article, and already built a product that has paying customers.

Jdon How a Supreme Court ruling may stop you from reselling just about anything

tl;dr:

Student resells textbooks produced in Thailand making $1.2 million. Publishers sue him. They win first two rounds because "first sale" law does not apply overseas. Ebay and a hodgepodge of other groups support student. Case about to start in Supreme Court.

Jdon The island where people forget to die

I agree, but I'm not sure that there is any other way to establish positive discourse -- for most posts there are the enthusiasts and the middlebrow detractors, and virtue may often only appear after both of these positions are raised and discarded in favor of an hopefully Aristotelean mean. This is also to say that appropriate discourse depends largely on the context (i.e. what has already been said on the topic), and not simply on a single right answer (as in the sciences).

Jdon The story of the US told in 141 maps

An interesting idea, but probably could have been done better with an order magnitude less of maps with nice effects between (i.e. a horizontal side scroll with fade effects, rather than having to click on each little map tile).

Generally speaking, for a good infographic the picture should tell the story rather than you having to read explanatory text.

Jdon Anatomy of a Hoax (Sony Nexus phone)

tl;dr:

I created a 3d Model in 7.5 hrs and posted on Picasa. ~1 day later 500+ news articles, 90K web results. Did it for the lulz. btw, no one bothered to contact me to verify anything.

Jdon Twilio Is Crushing It: 150K Devs, 1.5M Phone Calls/Day, 500M Total Phone Calls

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Crushing%20it

I suspect that 'crushing it' first referred to standard usage of the male sexual organ and later was extended to other usages.

Jdon Silicon Valley Prefers Obama 2 to 1

> It is not advocating a political position

From the OP: "I prefer Obama too."

That's a political position, pure and simple. In fact, it is as good as an endorsement (and a somewhat sneaky one given that it comes at the end of a seemingly innocuous survey -- oh, la di da, I was interviewing my friends about economic growth since we know about it, being "startup leaders" and all, and what do you know, most of us support Obama. Oh, and by the way, so do I.).

Jdon Silicon Valley Prefers Obama 2 to 1

Additionally, when there is a potentially negative association with a particular political choice (i.e. the choice of something other than pg's preferred option), one will obviously refuse to report, and will usually not make one's refusal explicit. That is to say, that even were we to assume that the 32 people pg asked were utterly representative of the startup community as a whole (which I don't think we have grounds to do, esp. given pg's own sensationalist headline), we have every reason to suspect that the 9 people who have refused to answer (including explicitly and implicitly) may have an answer other than the expected norm.

Take that into account, and you have 15 Obama 6 Romney 9 Refuse to answer

Where does that leave us? Well, with more questions than answers, to start with.

Jdon Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This at 56

I agree, and I think the ramp up time plus the intoxication of total absorbtion almost mandates some degree of obsessiveness that makes programmers more similar to artists than other types of engineers - there has to be peace and quiet and you have to lock into the problem and once you are locked in it is difficult and unpleasant to disengaged.

I'm not quite sure about the long-term solution. Normal family life has never been something that many artists are capable of (i.e. Van Gogh), and perhaps companies need to be more accommodating of employees that work two 10-16hrs bursts a week, rather than the normal 9-5.

Personally, I am in the "at risk" category for leaving the industry for this reason -- it is both burn out and lack of interest. I don't know, I still think there is some great code left in me, but it needs more challenging problems then I am facing at present.

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

If I have time later today I'll extend your snippet, but my inclination is that the differences in speed become apparent only with very large numbers. I still suspect my algorithm is about 40-50% faster if you start with a googol.

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

Given that is a theoretical question that you are attempting to fit into an actual algorithm to ostensibly solve a real problem, doesn't the actual performance of the algorithm matter? I can see that within the context of theory of computer science there may not be a difference between the speed of the two algorithms, since both are "asymptotically optimal" (a term I'm not sure I entirely grok), yet within virtually any defined set of random numbers less than infinity the algorithm I provided will perform substantially faster.

I suppose I'm at a loss for words, since as a seasoned software developer without a deep background in theoretical computer science, it seems that I am being told to disregard my intuition based on experience in favor of a theoretical model that seems to ignore actual problem sets. Am I missing something?

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

Hmmm. But the Mule operated outside the Seldon plan.

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

> By any reasonable definition, every integer is closer to 0 than infinity.

Perhaps, but originally we weren't discussing 0, we are starting with an arbitrarily large number. This problem is exacerbated when you say:

> I disagree that increasing "exponentially"... is always faster ... Both versions have the same worst-case running time

Worst case, sure, but how do you compute average? You could take a selection of n number of integers from 0 to infinity and the number of guesses until you found the correct answer, but of course you can't do this because you can't easily get a random number to test with that is between 0 and infinity. That said, it is fairly clear that x * x is faster than 2x is faster than x+1, but you can only prove this to be true once you pick an arbitrary limit less than infinity -- and the benefits of the better algorithm are only evident as you approach infinity.

Seems like a catch 22. Perhaps there is some expert in set theory as applied within computer science that can provide the appropriate formal context for determining the better algorithm in this context.

As for O notation, it is an interesting tool but one that has no application within any realm of actual programming in which I have worked, and I have never bothered to learn it simply to dazzle people in algorithm-based interviews (perhaps because I do more nuts and bolts type work rather than optimization).

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

Within the context of the interview question, the solution is specifically stated to be between 0 and infinity, and you can't surmise that the number is necessarily closer to 0. This is the error that my interviewer made. He was trained to deal with things within the context of situations closer to real life rather than the theoretical box he had established for the interviewing situation.

As for my case, I did attempt to start at an arbitrarily large number (but he wouldn't let me), and then went up exponentially (i.e. x = x * x), bi-secting the space once the upper-bound was found and solving from there.

My interviewer was sadly not that bright and didn't understand my solution, forcing me to re-write it -- incidentally, lecturing me on how wonderful O(log n) is along the way.

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

I have mixed feelings about this. I had an interview at Palantir with a self-described "front-end" guy, who asked me to write an algorithm to find a number between zero and infinity, where you could pick a number and you would get a response that would tell you whether or not the number was lower or higher than the secret number. The dude had a particular form of approaching the problem that was not at all the fastest form, in fact, he insisted on starting at zero and using an algorithm that was "2x," which he insisted was "fast enough."

I thought that a system which started at zero and went up by multiples of two was obscenely slow, and I hinted at this, but he insisted on having things his way. In the end I'm sure he wrote me a bad review and I wasn't offered the job (I didn't really want it anyways, given my impression that the team I was interviewing for wasn't that focused).

In any case, I didn't go right now and say this is dumb, but I hinted at a better way, and even this hinting lead to some conflict. In the end I didn't get the job. I'm conflicted if this was the best approach. I could have pretended to be dumber than I actually am and gotten the job offer at least, which at this present moment I could probably use for leverage in the search for contracts or a job, but I couldn't bring myself to accept his not particularly good algorithm (full disclosure: the process was also affected by the fact that my flight was delayed from the east coast, that I got 4 hours of sleep, the fact that I insisted in wearing a tweed coat to the interview, which may have impacted ever important perception of "fit," and that the interview in question was a "surprise" interview after several other interviews).

Jdon The Most Revealing Job Interview Question

Would love to hear more about your answer to the fictional theories of psychohistory. I have not read the Foundation series in a long time, and I've never quite understood the predictive mechanism, how possible Asimov actually thought it was, or the wrinkle introduced by the Mule.

Jdon America to immigrants: keep your entrepreneurs

Title is confusing. It should be "would-be immigrants" not "immigrants."

Jdon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2012)

SEEKING WORK - Berlin (Remote)

Full stack web-developer specialized in complex enterprise systems (esp. Salesforce) seeks projects on short or long term basis. Send me the problems your in-house developers can't solve.

Available for work with any of the following: Java, Apex, Javascript, Ruby, Kittens

https://github.com/fractastical

Jdon Dave The Incredible Mindreader – How Does He Do It?

This is to a certain extent based on a misconception. First, 'negging' is simply one tactic in the arsenal of the PUA, although in the present circulation it receives a good deal of prominence due to its counter-intuitive nature and the legions of doltish would-be PUAs that run around 'negging' people since they don't have any other social skills. Sadly, here, as elsewhere, the audience which is most likely to get into the "Game" most completely are those that have the lowest prospects to start with, and a few tricks are not going to change someone with no social skills into Prince Charming in a matter of sessions.

That said, although I have more or less agreed with you with regards to the 'social stunted' part (as a generalization) 'negging' is not particularly targeted at the emotionally damaged who respond to being put down. It is a tactic charged at the supremely confident, attractive girl who is used to blowing off guys who approach her. The 'neg' is, consequently, first and foremost, an expression of confidence by the person who is approaching her. He is not approaching her as a fawning wretch, but someone who thinks of himself as her equal or even superior.

That this can be a turn on of sorts, esp. when contrasted with the usual types of social interaction encountered by very attractive women at bars and clubs, should be obvious. That the usual types of social interaction at bars and clubs are far from ideal or normative is hopefully also understood.

Jdon Meeting A Troll

One potentially but as of yet unmentioned aspect is the "game thing" itself. The fact that he refers to this as a "game," indicates that by means of some conspiracy theory site or other, he was more or less interacting with others in competitive harassment.

Take the following potential scenario:

  Impressionable youth joins conspiracy site, finds lots of anti-semitic information. 
  The youths of the forum are encourage to pick a Jew and harass them, recording both their creations (i.e. a plastic container filled with ashes), and the responses of the person they are harassing.
  Within the context of a game this harassment can immediately seem quite harmless. I am actually not thinking much about the person who is on the receiving end of my "prank" anymore, I am simply thinking of the optimal reaction I can get from my "innovative" creation in the harassment sector. 

  Anyways, easy to see how something like this could get out of hand. Very out of hand in this case.

Jdon Quit My Job For Consulting: Two Months Later

Here are my take aways:

(1) Say that you can do everything

(2) Be cheap (he starts at $200/day)

(3) Offer something for free

(4) Talk about "shipping" a lot

I'm not sure I would want to attract the sort of clients he gets.

Jdon I don't know what the fuck I'm doing

I had exactly the same response (i.e. "I can't believe what gets upvoted around here sometimes"). Still I virtually never flag something, although this one is very tempting...

Jdon Startup idea list

You mean, like a computer instead of a button?

Jdon [dead]

This is generally speaking an excellent comment about which I agree more or less completely, but your final statement doesn't really tie it all together and instead is itself an example of a fallacious statement. Even if it is true that there is a lot of diversity between nations with a majority Muslim population, it does not necessarily follow that there are not certain opinions and responses to stimuli that we might expect within populations which ostensibly adhere to the same religion. Indeed, much of modern social science (Weber, Durkheim) was founded on articulating the differences between predominately Catholic and Protestant countries, including the now famous "Protestant work ethic."

Of course, at the time I'm sure it was politically incorrect to say that "Catholics are lazy," and even now that would be an astonishingly rude over-simplification -- nonetheless it is possible to make generalizations on the basis of aggregated data that are generally correct.

To chose a somewhat less politically sensitive example, if one were to look cross culturally at fundamentalists within monotheistic traditions, I suspect you would find that they support wife-beating at a much higher average than the general population -- of course, this is a much more politically correct way of going about things, insofar as you don't disturb things too much by pointing out the problems in people who are, generally speaking, quite far away from you -- nonetheless, we are able to make these sorts of generalizations accurately and there is no reason why we can not also do so for the Muslim world.